Millions of parents lie to let kids join Facebook

Facebook requires that its members be at least 13 years old, yet millions of tweens are joining the social networking site. Of the 20 million minors who actively used the site in the past year, 7.5 million–or more than one-third–were younger than 13, according to a Consumer Reports Survey.

Do parents even have a clue that their kids are clicking on Like buttons? Yes, they know their children are on Facebook, and in many cases parents are helping their kids lie to get around the site’s age limit, according to a recent survey by researchers at Berkeley, Harvard and New York University.

Facebook screens applicants by asking for their birth date and rejecting those who are too young. But it’s easy to bypass the age restriction by falsifying your age.

Of the parents surveyed, 84 percent said they were aware of their child’s illicit account and 64 percent said they helped their child join the site. The researchers found that parents’ awareness and involvement generally decreased with an increase in age. So while 95% of parents were aware their 10-year-olds had an account, only 82% of parents surveyed knew their 12-year-olds were Facebook members. And 78% of parents helped their 10 year-olds create the account while 76% of parents with 12 years were involved.

Are these parents ignorant and unaware of the age limit? Definitely not. Of the parents who helped their kids join Facebook, most (90 percent) were aware that Facebook had a minimum age, but many of them saw it as more of a recommendation than a requirement. They felt that it was OK to violate the age minimum because they were monitoring their children’s online use.

The Facebook age limit is definitely a requirement and it’s meant to comply with a federal law known as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Enacted in 1998 and finalized by a U.S. Federal Trade Commission rulemaking in 2000, COPPA was introduced to protect children’s online privacy and limit the amount of information a site can collect from kids under 13.

The law is there to protect children, but the researchers on this study found that parents don’t want the government to tell them how to parent. “Overwhelmingly, parents believe that they should have the final say about what their child can do online,” the study authors wrote. “When asked who should have final say about whether or not their child should be able to access online services, 93 percent of parents indicated that they themselves should.”

What do you think? Should the government or parents determine whether a child is old enough for Facebook?